Amazing Advertisers || January 2015

Aloha Sprinklerinos,

As we draw near to the end of January, I am reminded of all the resolutions I made a few weeks back and the boosted optimism I had for the fresh start of a year. How are you going with mine? I still feel pretty perky and hope to remain so throughout February!

This month has been a big month for Amazing Advertisers, with a few newbies joining us as well as the return of our oldie but goldies! You may have seen some of these lovelies before, but just in case you haven't, let's take a fresh look. 

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Lea Blush

Lea Blush- All Things Beauty is a YouTube Channel, run by Lea Clements. As yet there are no uploads on here but I'm sure Lea is set to having something cracking up there soon that we can all enjoy!! From the looks of the videos Lea has liked, she enjoys music and beauty. Not much else I can say about this one yet but I'm excited what the future holds for her!

SilverSpoon London

SilverSpoon London is run by Angie and as she states, is a blog 'fusing London life, food adventures and luxury travel'. Angie's blog is a treasure chest of incredible photography, mouth watering food and can I just say, beautiful dresses- that lady is smokin'! This month Angie has celebrated two big milestones so hop on over to see what they were and drool at the gorgeous pictures. 

The Road Is Long...

Oooeeee be still my beating heart this blog is a beauty. Imagine a perfect glossy magazine that makes you want to get out into the world and actually do stuff? This is it. I just spent a little bit of time reading the 35 by 35 article and now feel full of inspiration to write my own. Reading the exciting lives of Lucy and Yannick is completely captivating and something I urge you to do too. 

Darling Dee Dee

Darling Dee Dee is a most delightful, classic beauty blog. With clear photographs, well written copy and a crisp design, it is easy to be lured into it's pages and start making a terribly long shopping wish list! I love that Dee includes well, natural lit, shots of swatches to go along with the reviews and I love that this month there has been so much Charlotte Tilbury. That rose gold packaging gives me all the feels!

Anna In Wonderland

Anna is an impressive lady. As well as currently studying for her PhD, she is also doing a whole host of other super clever things that she has listed on her About Page (do go and have a nosey). This month Anna has hosted a giveaway, celebrated her book turning one, posted her videos, shared a hair tutorial, been poorly sick (sending hugs!) and said some very lovely things about me! Anna is one of our oldie but goldies so do give her some sparkly love!

Get The Skinny

Written and run by Tara, Get The Skinny is a blog dedicated to fitness, food, lifestyle and well being. If, like me, one of your new year's resolutions is to up your exercise intake and take better care of yourself, this blog might be a really good resource for you. Beautifully laid out, crisp and clear, well worth a looksie. 

PinkSparklesBeauty

PinkSparklesBeauty is written by 22 year old Jen and is her own little slice of the web to chat about all the things she loves and enjoys. This month Jen has shared with us her excitement for an upcoming holiday to one of the Greek Islands (lucky lady) and her favourite beauty products- so fun to see some Zoella Beauty bits in there too. A lovely little spot :).

Doing Life My Way

Doing Life My Way is a beautiful blog written by Alexandra who lives Down Under. This month she is travelling around Asia and by the sounds of the update she gave us, she is having an action packed blast! She has promised to share a few pictures with us when she returns from her travels and maybe also a vlog so I am really excited for that and think you all will be too!

Skorch Magazine

Skorch Magazine is a haven for the plus sized. Packed to the digital rafters with shopping advice, makeup tips, interesting articles and curvy OOTDS, this site is a wealth and resource to those of you who might need or want a little more info or community in this area. Well worth a look for style inspiration and guidance. 

The Peppermint Pencil

Written by Anya, The Peppermint Pencil is a blog dedicated to creativity, food and lifestyle. Whilst this blog is wonderfully laid out and completely enchanting, I think the thing I have enjoyed most this month is the sweet little video of her 'blustery' days in London. It's so incredibly sweet and beautifully put together and well worth a watch. 

Trudy Johanna

Trudy's blog is an online diary for her to share whatever tickles her pickle and I'll be honest, I like that kinda thing- it's like a virtual pick n mix. I love the unique layout (very magaziney) and have particularly enjoyed the post, 'Her Success Is Not Your Failure', it's real food for thought and something I often need reminding of myself. Good job Trudy. 

And there you have it, a bevvy of beautiful blogs for you to peruse and enjoy! Thank you to all of these wonderful bloggers for their support this month and I'm looking forward to seeing what February brings for you all! Hurrah! 

Toodlepip!

xx

What's Happening In The Office?

A few weeks ago I shared this picture of me and my fearless office assistant, Miss Mya.

You can sort of see that "we" are building something, it just so happens to be a Billy bookcase from IKEA.  (My first time building this bookcase, "we" handled it with ease.) These two pictures marked the first step in "beautifying" our shared office. 

Originally Mr. UC claimed (was banished to) this office because he only had a desktop computer (I didn't want his "collection" anywhere else in the condo). 

He has since acquired a laptop and no longer needs to spend all his time in there, so we decided to share (I have taken over) the space. However, there is still the issue of the "decor". Mr. UC is a sci-fi buff, aka a Trekkie, and this is a shot of one side of the office when he had single occupancy.

Let's take a closer look at those bookcases. *Clears throat* This is not even all of his collection, I mean decor.

This is where the Billy bookcases enter and have made a huge difference already. Well, that combined with condensing his collection.

Let's zoom out a bit on this side of the room. The content of the shelves are in the midst of being organized, but oh what a vast improvement already!

Now let's flip around to the other side of the room. Goodness it a hodge podge of hot mess mixed with ugliness. That's ok though, these types of rooms make great reveals for the afters, right?

I did move the dresser into the room though, I will most likely paint it a different color.

So what's left to do in here? My to-do list, in no particular order:

1. Additional shelving for two bookcases (4 shelves)
2. Add doors to bookcases
3. Add knobs to bookcase doors
4. New desk... possibly build it
5. New filing cabinet
6. Repaint dresser
7. New curtains, lighter color
8. Organize paperwork
9. Organize office supplies
10. Organize craft supplies
11. Decorate "exposed" bookcase shelves
12. Better lighting for the room (There is no overhead lighting)
13. Extra seating... maybe slipper chair

Better get to work, till next time...

Motivational Monday || Magic

Aloha Sprinklerinos,

Did you have a good weekend? I hope that if you did, the positivity has carried through into the start of a new week. 

I chose this one today because it seems to fit nicely with a couple big things I have been thinking about a lot lately, the first being God and the second being Disney World. 

I know, an odd mix but still with something in common. Both God and Disney put a great focus on belief. To be clear to anyone wondering, I am not bunching to two together and show both topic the appropriate respect in my thoughts, it's just hard to always convey that via text and screens.

As a Christian, I have a strong belief that there is a God and he is the Father of Jesus and he holds our lives in his hands and is there to guide, love, support and teach us. The majority of my friends are not Christians (or any other religion) and so many times I have found myself in conversations where I am put to the test, don't have the answers and simply respond with, 'because I believe it'. It's hard to explain how or why I believe in God but sometimes I say this-

"When Darcy couldn't talk and was a little baby, I knew in my heart that she loved me. She didn't say it outloud and she didn't do anything grand to show me, but I had such belief that she did, that I knew. That's how I feel about God. I just believe it so deeply that I know."

Believing in God brings me more peace than I could ever write in a blogpost. I am not scared of my life or of the future and I am not scared of what comes after. Sure, I fret and worry about the little things, but when I really think on it, I remember that my life is just part of God's plan and all I need to do is follow that and I'll be fine. A lot of people may think this is stupid but I don't feel embarrassed or ashamed, I feel soothed. 

And now Disney. Walt Disney World is my favourite place on earth. I'm the kind of woman who cries at the parades, skips down Main Street and almost floats through the day because to me, it's all just so magical. I believe in the magic. Yes, you could argue that it is all carefully designed to make you feel that way, but I'm fine with that. You wanna design a place that is a delight to be in, smells incredible, looks fantastic, sounds amazing and is made purely to please, go right ahead, I'm happy to be a part of that. Rather than questioning the mechanics of the operation, I am glad to look upon it as magic and enjoy every moment I can. 

The point I am making is this- If you want to pick apart every single thing to see how it works or to question why or to know every little detail, sure, go ahead. Sometimes though (and not for everything but just some special things), don't. Sometimes when you don't look for it, it's just there, waiting to be enjoyed or loved or soothed by. Let yourself go with something and enjoy the magic of it. It's really, really nice. 

Next time you feel like something lovely is happening and you want to enjoy it, just enjoy it. Choosing to believe in something does not make you dumb or weak, it shows strength that you can allow yourself to do that and have the faith to be able to. 

Toodlepip!

xx

(Disclaimer - I know religion is a sensitive topic and I always worry that my opinions are in some way offensive. Please don't pick me apart (haha kinda the lesson of the day) or be mean about them, I won't respond or engage. I'm not saying God is 'magic', I'm saying more that he is 'miraculous'. Cool <3 font="">

Primark Haul

Aloha Sprinklerinos,

To me, shopping is therapy. Walking round the racks and racks of brightly coloured garments, running my fingers over the textures, flicking through the hangers for my size and picking something up to decide whether I want to take it home or not. Oof. I just love it. 

Over the Christmas holiday and last week I made two trips to two different Primarks and collected a few bits and pieces for our upcoming travels (more on those another day). 

I made this haul video to show you the delights Primark has to offer at the moment and lots of you left lovely comments saying you enjoyed it. 

Sometimes I think watching Haul videos is like the modern day equivelant to window shopping. It's addictive and I love it!

If you are unable to see the embedded version, click HERE to watch it directly on YouTube. 

Do you ever shop at Primark? What do you usually buy?

Toodlepip!

xx

Organizing My Computer Files

January is known as a month that a lot of people focus of getting organized. Personally, I love taking full advantage of the sales on organizational supplies, but I also love no cost organizing too. That being said there is one space you can organize without spending a dime. Do you know what it is? It’s the space on your computer. That's right your desktop and all your computer files.

I don’t know about you but since pretty much everything I do is digital, it’s been easy for my desktop and documents folder to get cluttered and out of hand. Then add to the mix the family and blog photos, the blog videos and the printables I create and you have the perfect storm for a cluttered mess.

I recently took the bull by the horns and uncluttered my desktop. It had gotten quite cluttered from all the files, photos and documents that I download and was actively working on while making my 2015 planner. Now, this is what it looks, as you can see it was 9:17 at night when I took this screenshot. So much more please to my eyes.

Next, it was time to organize the dread Documents Folder. On the left (the before) you can see there were a few files not placed in specific folders. So I deleted the files I no longer needed and created a couple of new folders (highlighted on the right) and organized the out-of-place files.

 

But the big issue was my Downloads folder... eeeek! There were 154 items in this folder and being a a mixture of photos, fonts, pdf files, and other random things. 

First I tackled the pdf and word documents, purged the unnecessary ones and relocated the rest. After that I renamed the all the photos and saved them in the correct folders.

Finally, I deleted all the files I was keeping for no good reason.

Ah... much better!

After organizing your computer, you may notice that some of your folders are quite large or you may find files that you don't want to lose. For our family its our photos, we have had the terrible misfortune of losing the majority of our digital photos because of a hard drive crash. I have also experienced a loss of blog photos because of a misplaced USB stick. When you lose precious memories like that, you quickly realize the importance of backing up your files.

As you can see below, I have currently 14 GB worth of photos in my Pictures folder, its definitely time to back up and reduce the amount of photos I'm storing on my hard drive.

Mr. UC, being in the Information Technology field, has handled all of our needs related to backing up our data. He has also made things super simple for me, placing an icon on my desktop entitled "IESHA BACKUP HERE." LOL. That man knows make it simple or I probably will not get around to doing it. Can't get any simpler than a click of a button. You may be wondering what happens when I click that button... well all the contents of my Documents folder gets copied to my folder on a 1 terabyte external hard drive.

The cloud is a great option for backing up as well. I use it in addition to the external hard drive for my edited blogging and instagram photos. You can use either as your sole backup option but I've found it helpful to have both options. It ensures that your more important items do not get lost.

Now, what about you? How do you currently organize your files? Do you have a schedule to purge unnecessary files? Do you have a way to back up your files? Why not try following this handy calendar provided to me by singlehop.com? Its an easy to follow step-by-step process, allowing you to not get overwhelmed as you get your computer space in tip-top shape. Also, if you are interested in learning more about the cloud and how to use it, check out SingleHop's page about dedicated private clouds.

Till next time...